Tamás Dusek (p), Ana Sargento, João Pedro Ferreira, Peter Toth

Roberto Patuelli

The settlement structure has a major impact on the road network, which has a feedback effect on the shaping of the settlement structure. The road network has an important impact on the pattern of network distances and time distances, which through accessibility have an important impact on overall economic and development indicators. Hungary and continental Portugal are countries of almost the same size, with similar levels of development but slightly different shapes and significantly different settlement structures, whose road networks have undergone important developments in recent decades. The aim of the study is to compare the global and local indicators of overall accessibility for the two countries as a whole and to compare the significantly better and worse-off small regions of the two countries, identifying those areas with a more deficient network coverage.
After outlining the methodological foundations and comparing the characteristics of the geographical and time spaces, the empirical analysis uses matrices of time distances as starting points, at municipality level (278 spatial units) for Portugal and at district level (175 spatial units) for Hungary. The different spatial divisions, which in both cases are related to the settlement structure, cause only a small difficulty in the comparison. Thereafter, two-dimensional scaling will be applied to identify the different global and local distortions of the time spaces, followed by a bidimensional regression to compare the geographical space with the spaces defined by the time distances.

Carles Méndez-Ortega (p), Eduard J. Alvarez-Palau, Cristian Castillo-Gutierrez

Tamas Dusek

Over the past few decades, there have been widespread reports of urban and logistics sprawl, which have led to significant changes in land use patterns. The importance of central locations has undergone a notable evolution, largely due to the rise of e-commerce, which has transformed traditional warehouses into e-fulfilment centers, affecting both their internal layout and preferred location. In light of these developments, our paper aims to investigate the locational factors that drive the establishment of logistics platforms in Spain. We have collected data on approximately 4,500 facilities and analyzed the correlation between the number of logistics platforms in each municipality and a range of influential locational factors, including transport infrastructure, demographic characteristics, land availability, land taxes, education levels, and administrative status. Our findings highlight the crucial role of transport infrastructure and proximity to urban metropolises in determining the optimal location for logistics platforms.

Satoru Kumagai, Kenmei Tsubota (p), Toshitaka Gokan, Kazunobu Hayakawa, Ikumo Isono, Suknilanh Keola

Carles Méndez-Ortega

Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFCs) shall transform the existing logistics networks in India, which can boost up economic growth. DFCs can potentially trigger significant modal shifts from road transportation to railways, which can reduce CO2 emissions.

We built an economic geography model of the Spatial General Equilibrium Model called Geographical Simulation Model, based on Spatial Economics, featured by urbanization, economic clustering, and transportation costs. It is equipped with modal choice among road, rail, ship, and air.

We compiled a geo-economic dataset for DFCs, whose Indian part is consisted of district level and 576 regions, which is well suited for the study of intra-national large scale infrastructure project analysis.
Scenarios
We conducted three scenarios for 2040: 1) West DFC, 2) East DFC, and 3) All DFCs. We compare these results with the baseline scenario where DFCs are not completed and completed.

There are significant impacts both in economic and environmental terms. When both DFCs are operational, real GDP per capita shall increase around 0.96% in 2042. If we only have one DFC, the impacts shall be less than half of this, showing that there are synergy effects, where implementing both projects together has more significant consequences than the sum of each. On the environmental side, though freight flows and economic impacts increase, both DFCs can reduce CO2 emissions by about 24.21% compared to the case without DFCs. Again, the implementation of both DFCs can bring larger impacts to reduce CO2 emissions than those with only one DFC. These suggest that the direct impacts of reducing CO2 are far larger than the increasing CO2 due to stimulating economic activities.

Roberto Patuelli (p), Michele Rabasco, Aura Reggiani, Rebecca Rossetti

Kenmei Tsubota

Mobility hubs are currently receiving considerable interest in the literature because of their potential key role in encouraging the transition from private car-based transport to more sustainable mobility. These hubs are dedicated and permanent platforms where public and shared transport can be integrated by switching between modes. In this paper, we focus on an additional aspect related to mobility hubs that has received less attention in the literature, i.e., the ability of mobility hubs to contribute to the robustness of the urban public transport network. We argue that the redundancy offered by a mix of alternative transport modes, fostered by the presence of mobility hubs, can mitigate the impact of the unavailability of public transport due to disruptions of various kinds (failures, accidents, strikes, etc.). This paper aims to provide the decisionmaker with an additional element to guide the choice of the most suitable locations where to implement mobility hubs. We identify this element in the analysis of urban public transport vulnerabilities. we study the public transport network using (complex) network analysis. First, we examine the structure of the public transport network from a topological perspective. To this aim, we employ measures based on shortest path and methods to calculate node/link centrality. Then, we add the network spatial features to the analysis, including the cost a passenger suffers to travel through the network. To do that, we weight links by a generalized cost. Finally, we integrate our model with passenger flows in order to move from a physical robustness to a user-related robustness point of view. To do this, we introduce a second level of weighting, based on passenger flows, to links. At this point, we study public transport network connectivity through performance measures and scenario analysis, where hypothetical disruptions are applied to the network. To complement the proposed analysis, we show how the loss of connectivity due to adverse events on the public transport network impacts the accessibility of urban areas, intended as the ease of reach of an area. Accessibility is studied using a spatial interaction model. Finally, in order to generate policy implications, we provide an example of a choice model to determine the best location in which to implement a mobility hub that also takes into account aspects related to the robustness of the public transport network.